The New World Order
by Gothamite
Summary: The second chapter in the miniseries based on the Superboy TV Show.


SUPERBOY: THE SERIES...CONTINUES  
  
**************************************************************************** ******* This is the second chapter of this miniseries in which (TV's) Superboy, finally becomes Superman. To find out what is going on, first read 'The Iron Fist Of The Sovereign'. **************************************************************************** *******  
  
Superboy, all related characters and indicia are trademarks of DC Comics Inc. I'm not quite sure who owns the TV show because Warner Bros. banned it. Possibly Viacom? Or Warner Bros. themselves?  
  
CHAPTER 2: The New World Order  
  
Clark had a terrible headache on the way to the Bureau For Extranormal Matters that morning.  
  
"What's wrong Clark?" Lana asked him as he found his way inside.  
  
"Just a headache." Clark answered.  
  
"Let me get you some aspirin." She said, fumbling around her bag.  
  
"No really, I'm fine..."  
  
Clark fell to the ground in front of everyone that was watching.  
  
He woke seconds later, panting madly. His boss, C. Dennis Jackson was smiling over him.  
  
"Maybe you should take the day off!" He suggested.  
  
Clark decided he would give his parents a visit. They had not seen him in quite some time, and maybe they would have an answer to what was happening. Clark made his way into a secluded part of the Bureau while no one was looking. He tore away his shirt revealing the S shield, confirming that this was no longer Clark Kent, but the boy of steel...Superboy!  
  
Lex was overlooking the stiff, expressionless body of the Sovereign. He was controlling his mind with a special chip implanted in his right temple.  
  
"Now to start the fun!" Lex announced.  
  
He walked over to a table and beckoned Sovereign to follow him. Lex took out a series of maps and displayed them on the table. He pointed at Capitol City Savings and Loan.  
  
"I want every single dime out of there!" Lex ordered Sovereign. "Do whatever you have to do!"  
  
Superboy continued flying toward Kansas where he hoped to see his parents, Jonathan and Martha. He floated gently down to the farmyard where he had grown up. He felt the familiar twinge in his head and he swung around and saw the barn where his adoptive father kept the farm equipment.  
  
Jonathan ate quietly while Martha stared into space wondering about Clark.  
  
"Do you ever wonder," she began "if he should think about changing his name?"  
  
"What's he gonna' change it to?" Jonathan asked. "Star-Child?" He laughed quietly at his joke.  
  
"I was talking about Superma-"  
  
There was a weak knock on the door. Jonathan scrambled over and opened it. Superboy collapsed at his feet.  
  
"Clark!" Jonathan exclaimed.  
  
"You can stay in bed for the rest of the day!" Martha ordered Clark as she took the thermometer away from the mouth of the hero lying in the warm bed.  
  
"What's happening to me?" Clark asked confusedly. "I keep getting these headaches, I'm having strange dreams and I'm fainting right and left. What's going on?"  
  
"I don't know son," Jonathan assured, "but you'll get over it."  
  
Martha placed her hand on Clark's.  
  
"We know you will."  
  
Clark soon dropped back to sleep.  
  
Again he enjoyed the pleasure of feeling the power coursing through him as though he were one with it. He enjoyed it. He savoured it.  
  
Sovereign landed outside the bank blankly. People looked at him thinking ran up to him thinking he was Superboy, but all he had to do was blow them out of the way. Sovereign smashed the wall of the bank to pieces and the people started screaming. He made his way over to the vault and picked it up, destroying the greater part of the wall attached to it.  
  
He casually walked outside, and was shot at a few times by policemen.  
  
"Freeze!" One of them shouted, pointing their gun at Sovereign.  
  
Sovereign squinted his eyes slightly, and out shot a steady beam of heat. The beam hit the man in the hand; he started screaming in pain and dropped his gun. Sovereign smiled sinfully. The officers beside the unlucky screaming one were still shooting at Sovereign.  
  
He arched his arms back and then lunged the vault forward at the officers.  
  
"Holy shit!" One of the screamed.  
  
The vault landed on one of the police officers, blood oozing out from the bottom. Sovereign picked up his vault and flew back into the sky.  
  
"Murphy?" The last remaining officer asked. "Murphy?"  
  
His friend was dead.  
  
Superboy was still holding the crystal in his hands, when he heard a numbing, deafening sound. He woke up suddenly, and recognised the sound. It was the beacon he had given to Hamilton at STAR Labs.  
  
"What is it?" He asked Hamilton and Winger groggily seconds later after landing in Metropolis.  
  
"He's escaped," Hamilton answered. "I came in here this morning only to find the computers powered off and the bars broken."  
  
"Could he have used his heat vision to get out?" Superboy asked.  
  
"Impossible." Hamilton answered, "not only were the bars charged, but I set a force field around them. He couldn't have escaped alone."  
  
Superboy thought to himself. Who would need Sovereign's help. Luthor maybe?  
  
At the Bureau the following evening, Lana showed Clark the newspaper. The headline was 'Superboy robs bank. Police file arrest warrant.' There was a picture of Sovereign flying away with the bloodstained bank vault in his hands.  
  
"Is it a hoax do you think?" She asked worriedly.  
  
"Definitely." Clark answered.  
  
"Are you all right?" Lana asked.  
  
"How do you mean?" He answered.  
  
"You seem a little distracted."  
  
"I'm just a bit tired is all."  
  
"Well," she started, "we're finished in fifteen minutes. Why don't we get something to eat?"  
  
"Sounds great." Clark said enthusiastically.  
  
Lex sat counting his millions to himself happily, back at the warehouse.  
  
"This will do just fine." He smiled.  
  
Sovereign limped toward him.  
  
"You...won't get away...with this..." He gasped. "I will kill you!"  
  
Lex frowned.  
  
"Now that's not right!"  
  
He took out his remote and pressed it again. Sovereign screamed in pain right before going back into his lifeless position. Suddenly, his eyes started squinting and he screamed. He was gaining control of the mind- control chip in his head. He was trying to reject it.  
  
"Damn you...Luthor!" He gasped. "I will tear your arms away! I will make you blood boil with heat! I will rip out your heart and make you eat it!"  
  
Sovereign stood up and reached into his head. He pulled the chip out of his temple. and threw it at Luthor. His head was bleeding, but that would soon heal.  
  
Sovereign grabbed Lex by the neck and started choking him. Lex fumbled around the table for a leaden box, finally finding it. He tossed it onto the ground, causing it to open. Green energy poured out in Sovereign's direction, turning his face a bright shade of green.  
  
Lex laughed for a moment. But it was short lived. He felt a pain in his knees as he fell to the ground. He stared over at a mirror and saw that his face was turning green now as well. After all these years of exposing Superboy to kryptonite, it was starting to affect him. But not as much as it was affecting Sovereign.  
  
Lex crawled over to the kryptonite and took it out. It still did not hurt holding it, but it was damaging his body nonetheless. He put it in the box and grabbed some tape from the table. He taped the open box to Sovereign's chest, so that the kryptonite would only affect him. But Lex did not have healing systems like Superboy and Sovereign did. His face was still green and his body ached all over. He limped over to the medicine cabinet he had set up and took an iodate tablet. He hoped it would do some good.  
  
Lex then limped over to a strange item covered in blankets. He pulled away the blankets revealing a strange laser. It was the duplicator ray. In the past it had created Bizarro, the thing of steel. But Lex had made modifications so that it made more accurate duplicates. He took the kryptonite away from Sovereign and placed it inside the machine. He activated the ray, and it shot a clean beam in Sovereign's direction.  
  
Clark and Lana walked toward the nearest diner happily talking about the events of the last few days. Suddenly, Lana felt something jab into her back.  
  
"Into that alley! The both of ya'!"  
  
The two followed the mugger's instructions and went into the deserted alleyway to which the mugger was pointing at.  
  
"Now gimme' all ya' got lady!"  
  
"Get lost creep!" Lana insulted.  
  
"Lana-" Clark stopped her before she said anything else.  
  
The mugger grunted and grabbed Lana's bag. But she kicked him in the chin. He stumbled backward and shot into the air. The bullet hit Clark smack in the head right in front of Lana. It ricocheted off him and toward the mugger. Clark placed his hand in front of him at super-speed, and caught the bullet in his hand. He then whacked the mugger in the back of the head, knocking him out. By the time the mugger would wake up, he would long have forgotten about Clark's secret.  
  
"I was right!" She said quietly.  
  
Clark stood in front of her at a loss for words while she stared at him in awe. She moved toward him and took off his glasses. He sighed sadly as he realized that his secret would pass on to another.  
  
"Superboy." She gasped.  
  
He smiled at her and gently brought her fingers to his chest. He pulled away his shirt revealing the world-famous S shield.  
  
Hr eyes pointed upwards and he nodded. He stepped away from her for a moment and tossed his civilian garments away at super-speed. Superboy stood in front of her with his hands on his hips. He moved closer toward her, breathing heavily knowing that things were about to change between them for the better. He put his hands around her and sailed into the sky.  
  
"Whoa!" She cried as he lifted her into the sky.  
  
Superboy flew her toward the Statue Of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge, even to the Grand Canyon.  
  
"We're flying hundreds of miles at unimaginable speeds," Lana thought "and I don't even feel airsick! It must be because I'm close to him. As long as I'm close to him, I'll be safe." She cuddled up closer to him and he smiled at her.  
  
All his life, Clark Kent had felt different about Lana. He did not think of her as a good friend or even his best friend. He always thought of her as something more than that. When Clark was only a child, he told his mother that when he grew up, he would marry Lana and they would live in the sky together. Martha chuckled at this; her son had never shown any interest in girls before. Maybe he was joking.  
  
Clark had never been more serious in his life.  
  
Lana had always thought of Clark as a friend. Her best friend in the whole world. And she always had hoped that it would stay that way forever. When Superboy first came, she knew from the very beginning that she was head over heels in love with him. In the beginning, she did not even suspect that Clark could be the boy of steel. Clark was a nerd. Sure he was reasonably handsome, but he always insisted on getting to bed by eight o' clock and studying very hard instead of partying. Lana was not much of a party animal herself, but she knew when to hang loose and have some fun.  
  
Lately though, Clark had changed his attitude around her and everyone else for that matter. He no longer was the nerdy Dudley-do-right he used to be. His voice had deepened and he did not sweep back his hair with that awful hair gel anymore. Lana had started to notice considerable similarities between Clark and Superboy. But it still seemed unlikely. She had known Clark all her life; it just did not make any sense that he would be able to suddenly gain all these amazing powers. But he did. Somehow, he did.  
  
Superboy flew faster and faster, his protective aura protecting both him and Lana. They flew through time zones, and past oceans, visiting the Big Ben, the Eiffel tower, the leaning tower of Pisa, and every beautiful site Superboy had ever wished to show the girl of his dreams.  
  
After an hour of sightseeing, Superboy flew them back to the skies of Capitol City.  
  
"Well," he said looking straight at her dark brown eyes. "You know now."  
  
"I'll never tell anyone." She said reassuringly.  
  
"I know." He answered.  
  
She pulled his face toward hers and they kissed.  
  
"And we're on in five, four, three, two..." the anchorman pointed at the newsreader and gave him the go ahead.  
  
The traditional 'News Music' was played and the lights came on revealing the newsreader.  
  
"Good evening. Tonight's top stories-what the heck?"  
  
The newsreader was looking at what was being displayed on screen. It was not him. It was a silhouetted figure wearing a trench coat.  
  
"Good evening Capitol City." The man said, his face shrouded in the shadows. His voice was unusually raspy and he wore a black leather trench coat. "This is Lex Luthor. Unless the leaders of the world announce me total ruler of this planet in less than twenty four hours..."  
  
The camera zoomed onto an army of Sovereigns. They all looked exactly alike.  
  
"Every single one of these creatures has the destructive power of your beloved Superboy. If I have to ask them, they will purge the earth and destroy everything that makes it beautiful. Twenty-four hours, before the new world order."  
  
After dropping Lana home, Superboy decided to head home. He had not had any of his strange headaches in a long time. Maybe he had just passed through a sick spell.  
  
Lex looked at himself in the mirror.  
  
"Hello." He rasped. "Hello." Worse this time. "Hello." He could barely even say 'Hello'.  
  
This radiation sickness was attacking his whole body. He would surely die soon. He brought his right hand up to his throat to press against it, to see if it would make any difference. His hand was decaying. One of his fingers had turned a dark shade of black as though it was singed, and it was shedding away like dust. Lex screamed, not in pain, but in sheer terror of what was happening to him. What Superboy had done to him.  
  
That night, Superboy dreamt he was flying to Smallville. Where he found the crystal once more. He picked it up and savoured the power for a moment. Then the crystal brought him up into the air, and he flew in a northerly direction.  
  
Lex's hand had totally decayed within eight hours, but he was able to create a special makeshift bionic hand that night. But that did not help his voice, or the rest of his decaying skin. Something was going to have to be done, and fast.  
  
Superboy was flying past the Arctic Circle, when blackness surrounded him and he fell back into his bed. He had been flying in his sleep again. He had not done that since he was eight years old! He got up and walked over to the television set.  
  
"Uh...the Sovereigns have now moved to the lower east side of the city," the newsreader said nervously in a bleak part of the city "and have just blown up the greater part of Capitol City Police Headquarters. Police are warning the civilians to stay away from this part of the city as it is quite possibly the most dangerous place to be at the moment."  
  
Superboy had been completely preoccupied to remember Sovereign's escape. How could he have been so blind?  
  
"Lana." He suddenly realised.  
  
He had spent so much time with a woman of earth that he had completely forgotten about the beings he had sworn to protect.  
  
As Clark began tossing on his Superboy suit he had another headache. A severe migraine, beckoning his head toward the wall yet again. There was something different about this headache. He had an insatiable urge to go in the direction his head was turned. He had to fight this urge. He continued putting on his suit and made his way into the sky.  
  
The Sovereigns were taking care of some military tanks that were trying to kill them. Kryptonite blasts were also secretly planned, but the Sovereigns were able to spot the kryptonite in time and destroy it from a distance.  
  
Superboy landed in front of the attacking Sovereigns as they continued ripping the tanks apart like cardboard. One of them spotted him and beckoned his brothers to come and help him defeat the original boy of steel. Superboy was about to fly up into the sky and fight them, but something was wrong. His legs would not lift into the air. He tried simply jumping into the air, but that was no good either. He even tried blasting the Sovereigns with his heat vision, but that was also out. What was going on? Where were his powers? Superboy went over to a streetlamp. He punched it as hard as he could. He cried in pain as he realised that all of his fingers were now broken.  
  
The Sovereigns smiled, realizing that Superboy was powerless. They flew down and beat him to a bloody pulp. They then tossed his broken body far out of the city and continued on their rampage.  
  
Lana watched her television set crying. The whole ordeal was being shown on the news. All she could do was watch him die.  
  
The dying Lex Luthor watched from his television set, miles away in his warehouse, laughing sinfully. Superboy was finally dead. Now Lex Luthor was easily the most powerful being on the planet. No one would be able to stop him.  
  
Superboy's corpse sped through the sky, past counties, past states, until finally, it sailed over Kansas. Something very strange happened then. A steady green beam shot out from the ground and smacked into the boy of steel. It beamed him down towards it, to the Kent farm, where Martha and Jonathan stood watching the strange ordeal.  
  
NEXT: 'Destinies' 


End file.
